Silence

This morning I went to the Mayadevi Temple, the Sacred Bodhi Tree and the green stone marking "The Exact Spot of the Buddha's Birth" at sunrise. Again, I'm skeptical; this whole site was lost for more than 600 years.

It is amazing how difficult it is for human beings to be silent. I always try to explain this to Thun, who likes to make noise. "You know it's difficult to remain quiet, right, Thun?"

"No, it's not!" he exclaimed, loudly.

"Sure it is; you know that," I reminded him.

"No it's not, Daddy, just put tape over my mouth," and he showed me how to keep him and Jason quiet. For good measure, he also taped his eyebrows to make himself look more monk-like.

Today at the temple, there were many signs: "Silence Please." Anybody who has read about the Buddha knows that he valued silence. Yet who were the biggest violators of the silence? The religious people, of course. One Chinese monk was walking around the temple so quickly I thought he was on his morning jog, and he was reciting his prayers so loudly that even the birds were disturbed. A couple of Sri Lankan priests were prostrating themselves and chanting loudly. Then there was a gathering of monks and nuns listening to a dhamma talk; naturally, the monk giving the talk was using an amplifier.

Not to be outdone, the Thai temple was preparing to receive some dignitaries. |They had a sound system with microphones and loudspeakers. The guy doing the sound check must have boomed out "neung, sawng, saam, sii, . . . " (one, two, three, four . . .) a thousand times. I got a headache.

Still, it was nice to see a little bit of Thailand in Nepal.